Tuesday, December 30, 2014

This wartime update of Baroness Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel features Leslie Howard (who also produces and directs) as a mild-mannered professor and champion of those opposed to the Nazis; he was the elusive Pimpernel in the 1934 film.

Monday, December 29, 2014

The Library of Congress has created a Flickr album of bookplates from one of its collections, which includes those of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Charlie Chaplin, Jack London, spy and mystery fan Woodrow Wilson, artist Francis Millet (who died on the Titanic), and "the doctor for weak railroads" Newman Erb (which includes an illustration of Edgar Allan Poe, left).

The exhibition also features noted garden designer Gertrude Jekyll, whose surname is so prominently featured in Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (her brother, Rev. Walter Jekyll, was a friend of Stevenson).

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

The Bad Blonde of the title, Barbara Payton, wants to be rid of her husband and uses her wiles to get a prizefighter to do the deed. The film was adapted from the novel The Flanagan Boy by British writer Max Catto.

Tuesday, December 09, 2014

There is no shortage of suspects when a showgirl with a fondness for money is murdered. On hand are Van Heflin (as PI Rocky Custer), Tom Conway (a producer), and Virginia Grey (Custer's wife and fellow investigator). The film is based on the novel by Sue MacVeigh (pseudonym of journalist Elizabeth Custer Nearing, a descendant of George Armstrong Custer who wrote four mysteries).

Monday, December 08, 2014

The New York Public Radio Archives looks at the checkered career of New York mayor William O'Dwyer, who as district attorney convicted several men involved in "Murder Incorporated" but had some shady associations. The tale involves mafioso Frank Costello.

Sunday, November 30, 2014

The Prologue blog of the National Archives discusses whether Carrie Fulton Phillips, recipient of racy love letters from Senator (later president) Warren G. Harding, was a German spy, including intelligence and Department of Justice reports.

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

There is a photographic exhibition from UK's National Portrait Gallery, "Mystery Writers Past and Present," on view at Darlington's Head of Steam Museum until December 14. The photos feature contemporary writers such as P. D. James taken by Nicola Kurtz as well as Victorian photos of authors such as Arthur Conan Doyle and Charles Dickens. The list of Kurtz's photographic subjects in the gallery's collection includes Clare Curzon, Stella Duffy, Frances Fyfield, the late H. R. F. Keating, Val McDermid, Andrew Taylor, and Minette Walters.

Sunday, November 23, 2014

The Times Literary Supplement has posted Orlo Williams's 1934 TLS review of F. Tennyson Jesse's A Pin to See the Peepshow (based on the Thompson-Bywaters case of 1922). He lauds "the solidness of Miss Tennyson Jesse’s construction, her intense
sympathy with her characters, and the vividness with which she paints
the scene of London life during the present century." Jesse—the great-niece of Alfred, Lord Tennyson—is also known for her plays, her volumes in the Notable British Trials series, and her psychic detective Solange Fontaine.

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

After women in New York obtained the vote in 1917, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle published a January 1918 article discussing the question of whether women should serve on juries as part of their civic duty. Some interesting quotes from the piece:

"in many things women could render a verdict more logical and more consistent than that of men."—Harry E. Lewis, district attorney, Kings County (NY); later presiding justice, New York State Supreme Court

"there are many cases where the intuition and experience of a woman would lead to the rendering of a better verdict than is sometimes rendered under the present system"—Russell Benedict, justice, New York State Supreme Court

"with votes for women goes jury duty for women"—Alice Hill Chittenden, former president, New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage

"There has been the point raised, I know, as to whether women can stand the nervous tension. Personally I think it rather absurd..."—Helen P. McCormick, asst district attorney, Brooklyn; first female asst district attorney in any U.S. city

• Holly Roth, The Content Assignment (aka The Shocking Secret, 1954). When a female CIA agent disappears, a British journalist sets out to find her. Sadly, Roth died at age 48 after falling off a boat.

• Upton Sinclair, World's End (1940). The first in a series with spy Lanny Budd by the author of The Jungle.

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

For Veterans Day: The Green Glove (with story and screenplay by frequent Hitchcock collaborator Charles Bennett) stars Glenn Ford as a former paratrooper seeking a valuable medieval artifact in France (along with more avaricious adversaries). The film also features Geraldine Brooks and Cedric Hardwicke.

The Canadian-born Ford served in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve during World War II and joined the Naval Reserve in 1958, eventually attaining the rank of captain.

Wednesday, November 05, 2014

Brigham Young University's Harold B. Lee Library has just updated its annotated bibliography on "colleges, universities or professors in murder mystery fiction." Although limited at present to materials available at BYU that were published before 2001, it may be useful to those who enjoy mysteries set in academia.

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

In Shadows on the Stairs, a London boardinghouse is the site of murder. The basis for the film is the play "Murder on the Second Floor" by actor-playwright Frank Vosper (The Man Who Knew Too Much; adaptation of Agatha Christie's "Philomel Cottage" as Love from a Stranger). He died at age 37 in 1937 when he fell from the liner Paris after a party. The death was ruled accidental.

Monday, October 27, 2014

"There's an east wind coming,
Watson": Basil Rathbone, left,
and Nigel Bruce in Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror

Using primary documents, James Cronan discusses on the UK National Archives blog the WWI service records of actors Ronald Colman (injured by an exploding shell), Herbert Marshall (lost a leg), Claude Rains (gassed), and Basil Rathbone (decorated). They served in the same regiment, albeit at different times. The comments mention the war records of Nigel Bruce (Rath-bone's Watson) and Victor McLaglen.

• Part 1 of the blog post (Colman, Rathbone)
• Part 2 of the blog post (Rains, Marshall)

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

There is an online exhibition on cartoonist V. T. Hamlin at the Univ of Missouri Libraries' Rare Books and Special Collections, which shows the influence of his caveman comic "Alley Oop" (chosen as a mascot by the Army Air Corps' 92nd Bomb Group and adapted as board games and a hit song). It mentions Frank Miller's noir comic "Sin City" (first published in 1991, adapted as a film in 2005).

Monday, October 20, 2014

The archival program From the Vault of Pacifica Radio Archives offers an episode from 2003 on Sorry, Wrong Number; Shirley Knight and Ed Asner star in Lucille Fletcher's classic radio drama about a woman who overhears a murder plot that hits close to home. The program includes background on Fletcher (the first wife of film composer Bernard Herrmann), a clip from the first broadcast (in 1943) featuring Agnes Moorehead, and a discussion with Knight.

Monday, October 13, 2014

A recent episode of BBC Radio 4's series Great Lives focused on Dorothy L. Sayers, selected by ex-MI5 chief turned novelist Stella Rimington and discussed by Sayers Society chair Seona Ford. Subjects covered include the obligatory Lord Peter Wimsey and the controversial series of radio plays penned by Sayers, The Man Who Would be King.

Monday, October 06, 2014

In November 2001, the radio program Focus 580 from Illinois Public Media featured Ed McBain (aka Evan Hunter, 1926–2005) discussing his early career and his pseudonyms; his writing routine; his series with his "conglomerate hero," the 87th Precinct (including Money Money Money); his aborted book tour in the wake of 9/11; and his differences in approach between McBain and Hunter works. During the program the granddaughter of mystery author Craig Ricecalls in; McBain finished Rice's The April Robin Murders after her death, and he explains how he came to be involved with the book.

Wednesday, October 01, 2014

The history radio program BackStory discusses the development of law enforcement in the United States from an ad hoc configuration of sheriffs and constables into a professional force. Discussion includes the LA police and a case that appears in James Ellroy's LA Confidential.

Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Mystery author and Oxford professor John Innes Mackintosh Stewart, aka Michael Innes, was born today in Edinburgh in 1906. The creator of a long-running series with Sir John Appleby, Innes also wrote the novel Christmas at Candleshoe (1953), which was adapted as Disney's Candleshoe (1977) with screenplay work by Rosemary Anne Sisson (e.g., Sayers's Have His Carcase with Edward Petherbridge). In the film, unscrupulous David Niven thinks there is a cache of treasure in the house of Helen Hayes and enlists Jodie Foster to help him find it.

Monday, September 29, 2014

Following a program on John Williams, the radio program University of the Air focuses on film composer Bernard Herrmann. Host Norman Gilliland discusses his work with author-film professor Raymond Benson, playing excerpts from Citizen Kane, The Day the Earth Stood Still, North by Northwest, Psycho, Taxi Driver, and Vertigo.

Friday, September 26, 2014

Was William Breen at that moment on a train or an airplane on his way to unextraditable ease with a few hundred thousands of the bank's funds in a modest suitcase at his feet? Mr. Vane knew how it could have been done. He had worked out a perfect system years ago. Now, of course, it would be too late—for him. Why hadn't he done it first? He pretended he believed it was his moral uprightness that had prevented, but as a matter of fact he was afraid of airplanes and got desperately seasick even in a rowboat on the lake. Of such things are virtue made sometimes. (Crime in Corn Weather 51)

A tyrannical banker from a rural town in the Midwest disappears, and his neighbors suspect foul play in Mary Meigs Atwater's only mystery novel. Atwater's focus is the effect of the event on the residents, and there is a great deal of wisdom in her observations of people seeking to capitalize on the case (merchants, reporters) and those with sadder legacies (a World War I veteran, a young woman, a henpecked husband). Younger readers may not know what a switchboard is, and there is one appearance of the six-letter "N" word (in reference to a lawn jockey) that contemporary readers may find disconcerting.Mary Meigs Atwater (1878–1956) was referred to as the "dean of American handweaving" and as "gun toting" and "chain smoking" in the Interweave Press 1992 reprint of Crime in Corn Weather (iii). She was a granddaughter of Montgomery C. Meigs, the Union quartermaster general during the Civil War who later played a key role in the development of Arlington Cemetery, the Pension Building (now the National Building Museum), and the Washington Aqueduct. Her sister, Bryn Mawr professor Cornelia Meigs, received a Newbery Medal for Invincible Louisa, a biography of Louisa May Alcott. In the Interweave Press edition of Crime in Corn Weather, there is a tantalizing reference to an unpublished mystery manuscript by Atwater.

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Baroness Emmuska Orczy was born today in Hungary in 1865. In The Emperor's Candlesticks, based on the Orczy novel of the same name, William Powell and Luise Rainier are rival agents using candlesticks to convey secret messages. Robert Young and Maureen O'Sullivan costar.

Monday, September 22, 2014

Boston College's Law Library is featuring the exhibition "The Law in Postcards" based on a collection donated by Michael H. Hoeflich (University of Kansas). Some of the postcards may be viewed online. Themes include animals, bars, divorce, female lawyers, holidays, humor, kids, love, and money. The exhibition will be on display until early 2015.

Saturday, September 20, 2014

Just published is vol. 32, no. 2 of Clues: A Journal of Detection—a theme issue on global crime fiction guest edited by Stewart King (Monash University) and Stephen Knight (University of Melbourne). If interested in ordering the issue or subscribing, email McFarland.

The cover features Swedish author Arne Dahl. The table of contents follows below. I will add links when available.

Crime Fiction as World LiteratureSTEWART KING
This article explores crime fiction within a world-literature framework. It
argues that the study of national traditions can blind us to the dialogue across
borders and languages between texts and authors. It proposes a reading
practice that aims to develop a more nuanced understanding of this truly
global genre.

Beyond National Allegory: Europeanization in Swedish Crime Writer Arne Dahl’s Viskleken KERSTIN BERGMAN (Lund University)
Swedish crime fiction is experiencing a strong move toward Europeanization;
increasingly more novels are set in Europe and discuss European identities and
transnational criminality. The author examines how national and European
perspectives clash and interact in Arne Dahl’s Viskleken (Chinese Whispers,
2011), a novel featuring a multinational police team within Europol operating
across borders.

Hackers Without Borders: Global Detectives in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy NICOLE KENLEY (University of California, Davis)
The article argues that Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy is a response to the
challenges of mediating digital crime. It suggests that as the technological
aspects of global crime threaten to dissolve national borders, Larsson’s novels
offer the computer hacker as a detective figure capable of partially managing
these emerging threats.

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

The tumblr site of the Digital Public Library has posted a cover of Anna Katharine Green's Three Thousand Dollars (1910) as an example of early-20th-century book cover design. The book is about, according to the Woman's Home Companion that serialized it, "the romantic adventures of a beautiful girl and the problem of a secret safe."

Tuesday, September 16, 2014

John Creasey, thought to be one of the most prolific mystery authors ever, was born on September 17, 1908, in Surrey. The TV series Gideon's Way (aka Gideon C.I.D.) with John Gregson was based on Creasey's novels under the pseudonym J. J. Marric. These featured Scotland Yard's George Gideon (played by Jack Hawkins in the film Gideon's Day) and are important in the history of the police procedural. This episode, "The Tin God" (Nov. 1964), stars John Hurt in a tale about a gangster wanting revenge on the wife who put him in prison.

Monday, September 15, 2014

Opening on October 3 at the Portland (ME) Public Library is "The Pulps," an exhibition of original cover art for the pulps that will include Tarzan, the Shadow, and Doc Savage. The exhibition, cosponsored by the Maine College of Art, will run until December 26.

Tuesday, September 09, 2014

Director Andrew McLaglen, son of actor Victor McLaglen, died on August 30 at age 94. Known for his work in Westerns (such as Gunsmoke), he also attracted early attention for his crime film Man in the Vault, in which locksmith William Campbell (Star Trek) is pressured by a mobster to steal $200,000 or face dire consequences to his girlfriend. Anita Eckberg and Paul Fix also star.

Monday, September 08, 2014

Mystery Brewing Co. in Hillsborough, NC, produces rustic ales, and its taproom has a library. Its resident historian-librarian, Sarah Ficke, posts weekly on recommended books, which often are mysteries. One featured work, Contending Forces, is by early African American mystery pioneer Pauline E. Hopkins (best known in mystery for "Talma Gordon").

Wednesday, September 03, 2014

As part of its "Exile Noir" program this month, the UCLA Film & Television Archive plans to screen Bluebeard (1944); The Blue Gardenia (1953); Caught (1949); City That Never Sleeps (1953); The Dark Mirror (1946); Hollow Triumph (1948); Jealousy (1945); The Locket (1946); Sleep, My Love (1948); Sorry, Wrong Number (1948); and Whirlpool (1950).

Tuesday, September 02, 2014

Most people are familiar with the 1957 film starring Henry Fonda as the juror who isn't so sure that the defendant in a murder trial is guilty, but there was also an earlier Studio One version directed by Franklin Schaffner and starring Robert Cummings, Franchot Tone, Norman Fell, and Edward Arnold.

Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Among the many distinguished performances of Richard Attenborough, who died at age 90 on August 24, was in Seance on a Wet Afternoon with Kim Stanley (1964, dir. Bryan Forbes). It was based on the novel Seance by Australian Mark McShane, which Anthony Boucher considered one of the best debut mysteries of 1962.

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

In "The Pattern," a May 1951 episode of Lights Out, a man is haunted by an incident during World War II when he could not prevent the bombing of an army barracks. The episode, written by Ira Levin (A Kiss before Dying, The Stepford Wives, Rosemary's Baby, Deathtrap), features John Forsythe and Rita Gam.

Monday, August 18, 2014

Ad for the 1914 American version of A Study in Scarlet, starring Francis Ford

As the British Film Institute noted on August 15, it is calling on the public for assistance in locating a print of A Study in Scarlet, a 1914 silent-film adaptation directed by George Pearson that is an early screen portrayal of Sherlock Holmes. Also missing is the 1914 American version (starring Francis Ford, brother of the director John Ford), as well as Pearson's version of The Valley of Fear (1916).

Thursday, August 14, 2014

With a Pentel ballpoint pen, artist Wayne Mitchelson created this cool mural inspired by the work of Edgar Allan Poe. It is slated to go on display at UK's Loughborough Library. More on the work and the artist here.

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

In "The Mallet," a man hawking questionable medicines believes he has the formula to commit the perfect murder. Walter Slezak made his TV debut in this Dec. 1950 Suspense episode based on a 1929 story of the same name by Lost Horizon's James Hilton, who sometimes moonlighted in mystery.

Wednesday, August 06, 2014

On the International Spy Museum's SpyCast, Michael Goodwin (King's College London) talks about the formation of the British Joint Intelligence Committee.

Faber has launched a new nonfiction blog called The Curious Files. Its podcasts include historian Roderick Bailey on British spies in World War II Italy and Matthew Sweet on still more World War II spies running around London's West End hotels.

Tuesday, August 05, 2014

MWA Grand Master Dorothy Salisbury Davis died on August 3 at age 98. The June 1952 Suspense episode "House of Masks" (based, I think, on Davis's A Town of Masks) features Geraldine Fitzgerald resenting the interference of her sister in her life and promoting the presence of a shady gardener.

Thursday, July 31, 2014

Good news for Frank Drebin fans: Film Score Monthly announced that La La Records has released a limited edition of Ira Newborn's scores for The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad, The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear, and The Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult.

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

The Irish Humanities Alliance offers a podcast on "The Success of International Crime Fiction," drawing from a June 2014 conference at Queen's University Belfast. Discussing the topic (and the flexibility of crime fiction to encompass all sorts of commentary) are Kate Quinn (University of Galway), who presented a paper on crime fiction in Chile; writer Garth Carr; and David Platten (University of Leeds).

Monday, July 28, 2014

Debuting at the University of New Mexico Libraries is the Tony Hillerman Portal, which seeks to provide "an interactive guide to the life and work of Tony Hillerman." It includes the online exhibition "Tony Hillerman: From Journalist to Novelist"; maps of Southwest locations in the books The Blessing Way, The Boy Who Made Dragonfly, Dance Hall of the Dead, and Listening Woman; and audio and video interviews with the creator of tribal police officers Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee, who died in 2008.

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

In Knight without Armor, British secret agent Robert Donat must rescue aristocrat Marlene Dietrich from Bolshevik baddies. The film (produced by Alexander Korda) is based on Without Armor by Lost Horizon's James Hilton, with a screenplay by early Hollywood pioneer Frances Marion.

Monday, July 21, 2014

Front page of the Evening World of October 25, 1921,
reflecting the largest robbery of the time

The new exhibition "Behind the Badge: The U.S. Postal Inspection Service" at the Smithsonian's National Postal Museum includes famous scammers such as Charles Ponzi, a forged Robert Frost poem, counterfeit stamps, mail heists, assaults and murders of postal employees, and other cases involving the service such as that of the Unabomber.

Saturday, July 19, 2014

Pacifica Radio's From the Vault archival program is featuring a 1976 conversation between sci-fi author Philip K. Dick and Pacifica Radio's Mike Hodel. Topics include Richard Congdon, Harlan Ellison, Richard Lupoff, Kurt Vonnegut, the business of writing, A Scanner Darkly, The Man in the High Castle, and the first story sold by Dick (to Anthony Boucher who was, in Dick's words, "a great writer, a great editor, a great anthologizer, and a great person").

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

A recent article by Bill Phillips (University of Barcelona) is on "Religious Belief in Recent Detective Fiction." Some of the authors mentioned are Ken Bruen, James Lee Burke, G. K. Chesterton, Sara Paretsky, Robert B. Parker, and Ian Rankin.

Monday, July 14, 2014

For the blog of Academe magazine (published by the American Association of University Professors), Martin Kich (Wright State University) is crafting a series of posts on "Fifty Notable American Espionage Novels" (he is up to no. 29). His choices include the following:

Monday, July 07, 2014

As a fan of Dell mapbacks, I'm enjoying prowls through the 1940s-70s cover art in the Vintage Paperback Index at Bowling Green State University's Browne Popular Culture Library. Mystery authors represented include Lawrence Goldtree Blochman, Robert M. Coates, George Harmon Coxe, Mignon G. Eberhart, A. A. Fair (aka Erle Stanley Gardner), Leslie Ford, Brett Halliday, Dashiell Hammett, Geoffrey Homes, Baynard Kendrick, Helen McCloy, Zelda Popkin, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Rex Stout, and Phoebe Atwood Taylor. It's also not without its pleasant surprises such as the inclusion of Lloyd C. Douglas (The Robe, Magnificent Obsession) for Doctor Hudson's Secret Journal and C. W. Grafton (father of Sue) for The Rope Began to Hang the Butcher and The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope. In addition, there are items for western fans (The Law at Randado by Elmore Leonard) and sci-fi aficionados (Rocket to the Morgue by Anthony Boucher; Invasion from Mars ed. Orson Welles).

• At a May 1971 UCLA event, an often witty and blunt Serling commented on Twilight Zone episodes "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" and "A Stop at Willoughby"; Night Gallery episode"They're Tearing Down Tim Riley's Bar"; and the Hallmark Hall of Fame production "Storm in Summer." As can be expected given Serling's continual criticism of television, he had things to say about the state of TV in general:

"It . . . points out one of the major, in-bred problems of television: that however moving and however probing and incisive the drama, it cannot retain any consistent thread of legitimacy when after 12 or 13 minutes, out come 12 dancing rabbits with toilet paper."

He plugged science fiction authors such as Arthur C. Clarke and a young filmmaker by the name of George Lucas ("Science fiction is becoming an altogether legitimate art form") and good writing ("You judge good writing by its lasting quality . . . nothing I've written in my life . . . will ever be remembered 100 years hence"). He considered his best work to be "Requiem for a Heavyweight," The Rack, and Seven Days in May.

Tuesday, July 01, 2014

Directed by Henry Hathaway and based on Warrant for X(aka The Nursemaid Who Disappeared) by author-screenwriter Philip MacDonald (The List of Adrian Messenger, etc.), 23 Paces to Baker Street features Van Johnson as a blind playwright who overhears a kidnapping plot.

Monday, June 30, 2014

Libraries are always so interesting: a man's bookcase is something more interesting than the man himself, sometimes the one existing portrait of his mind.
—E. W. Hornung, The Crime Doctor

E. W. Hornung. NYPL

In English Literature in Transition, Edmund G. C. King (Open Univ) discusses the reading experience of British and Scottish soldiers in WWI, with particular attention to the wartime activities of E.W. Hornung (creator of Raffles, gentleman thief).

Sadly, Oscar—the only child of Hornung and Constance, Arthur Conan Doyle's sister—was killed in action at Ypres in July 1915. Seeking solace, Hornung served as a YMCA volunteer during the war—working in a canteen; maintaining a wartime library for soldiers in Arras, France, and a postwar one in the vicinity of Cologne, Germany; looking for friends of Oscar; and hoping to encounter Conan Doyle's serviceman son, Kingsley (who died of flu in 1918). His Notes of a Camp Followeron the Western Front(1919) tells about his war experiences and provides insight into what servicemen were reading (popular authors included Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Marie Corelli, Anthony Hope, and E. Phillips Oppenheim). Interestingly, he reports only one reader for Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White. Pertaining to the works of his brother-in-law, he wrote, "Messrs. Holmes and Watson were the most flourishing of old firms, and Gerard the only Brigadier taken seriously at my counter" (Notes 141). His own output was not ignored:

"When I was up the line," said one of my friends, bubbling over with a compliment, "a chap said to me, 'You know that old—that—that elderly man who runs the Rest Hut? He's the author of Raffles.'"

Adds Hornung in mock outrage, "Elderly! One would as lief be labelled Virtuous or Discreet" (Notes 144–45). Hornung died of pneumonia in 1921 at 54, hardly an advanced age.

King relates that Hornung kept a diary between December 1917 and March 1918 that took the format of letters to his wife. He drew on this diary to write Notes, but King indicates that the diary reveals more about Hornung's reasons for war service than Notes does. Hornung's friend Shane Chichester preserved a typescript of the diary, which is now in the University of Birmingham's Cadbury Research Library along with other papers. King also provides a heart-warming glimpse of Hornung at work via the World War I memoir of Carlos Paton Blacker, Oscar's Eton classmate who became a noted psychiatrist.

Thursday, June 26, 2014

As part of BBC Radio 3's programming on the centenary of World War I, the program Free Thinkingconvenes John Buchan's biographer Andrew Lownie and Buchan companion author Kate Macdonald to talk about the place of his war experience in The Thirty-Nine Steps and the popularity of the novel with servicemen.